This disclosure relates generally to calibrating sensors mounted on a vehicle, for example, an autonomous vehicle, and more particularly to calibrating sensors mounted on a vehicle by aligning scan data recorded by multiple sensors.
Autonomous vehicles, also known as self-driving cars, driverless cars, auto, or robotic cars, drive from a source location to a destination location without requiring a human driver to control and navigation the vehicle. The instructions for guiding the autonomous vehicle through a route are generated based on data received from one or more sensors mounted on the autonomous vehicle. Sensors mounted on a vehicle may drift over time, for example, as a result of temperature, vibrations of the vehicle, and so on. This causes sensor parameters to change over time. For example, for sensors which collect data describing the surrounding environment by rotating about a vertical axis, each sensor may begin their rotational cycle at a different starting orientation or angle. As a result, the environment recorded by each sensor during a single cycle may be shifted between sensors. Alternatively, some aspects of the surrounding environment may be excluded in some recordings, but included in others. In order to generate a complete representation of the surrounding environment, there exists a need for calibrating each sensor relative to each of the other sensors to correct for inconsistencies in their alignments.